The case is SPV-LS, LLC v. TransAmerica Life, 912 F.3d 1106 (8th Cir. 2018). The plaintiff estate sued TransAmerica and lost on summary judgment. The outcome of the case was not at issue in the sanctions motion. This case is from a year ago, but it is important and I am including it in this blog.
The discussion of the forgery of an engagement letter is below:
Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(g)(1) requires attorneys and pro se litigants to certify that every disclosure is “complete and correct at the time it was made” and that every discovery request, response, and objection is consistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, nonfrivolous, not submitted for an improper purpose, and not unreasonable or unduly burdensome. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(g)(3) imposes “appropriate” sanctions on attorneys or parties who violate Rule 26(g)(1). Such sanctions may include monetary penalties, such as expenses and attorneys’ fees, Johnson Int’l Co. v. Jackson Nat. Life Ins. Co., 19 F.3d 431, 438 (8th Cir. 1994), and are particularly appropriate when an attorney submits a forged discovery document. See Perkins v. Gen. Motors Corp., 965 F.2d 597, 600 n.5 (8th Cir. 1992). Unlike § 1927 sanctions, these sanctions are nondiscretionary. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(g)(3); Perkins, 965 F.2d at 600 n.5; see also Rojas v. Town of Cicero, 775 F.3d 906, 909 (7th Cir. 2015) (“Rule 26(g)(3) gives the judge discretion over the nature of the sanction but not whether to impose one.”); Chudasama v. Mazda Motor Corp., 123 F.3d 1353, 1372 (11th Cir. 1997) (“The decision whether to impose sanctions under Rule 26(g)(3) is not discretionary.”).
SPV’s key evidence supporting Rule 26(g) sanctions is an allegedly-forged discovery document and the associated metadata produced by Attorney Kroll. SPV presents no evidence that Attorney Donahoe participated in this violation of Rule 26(g)(1). We therefore decline to find that the district court abused its discretion in denying Rule 26(g) sanctions against Attorney Donahoe.
In response to a discovery request, Attorney Kroll provided SPV with a redacted copy of the retainer agreement between himself and the Estate’s personal representative. After filing a motion to compel production in a related proceeding against Attorney Kroll in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, SPV obtained an unredacted draft of the same retainer agreement. This draft showed Attorney Kroll would receive a contingency fee if either the Estate or the Trust prevailed in obtaining the death benefits payable under the Policy, supporting SPV’s theory that the Estate and Trust were controlled by the same parties in interest. When SPV produced the unredacted draft to the district court, the Estate claimed that draft was not a correct copy and produced its own unredacted copy of the retainer agreement. The Estate’s copy omitted the provision awarding Attorney Kroll a contingency fee if the Trust prevailed.
SPV requested Rule 26(g)(3) sanctions based on document metadata, taken directly 1114*1114 from Attorney Kroll’s computer by his e-discovery vendor. The metadata showed that the retainer agreement produced by the Estate, while purportedly signed by the Estate’s personal representative in August 2015, was not created until July 20, 2016—two days before Attorney Kroll produced the document to the court. Therefore, SPV argued, the document was forged. The district court acknowledged that fabricating discovery documents is grounds for sanctions, see SPV-LS, LLC v. Transamerica Life Ins. Co., No. CIV 14-4092, 2017 WL 3668765, at *3 (Aug. 23, 2017), but it denied sanctions against Attorney Kroll. It did so under the mistaken belief that SPV relied on a document examiner’s report to prove forgery, stating that SPV should have produced that report. However, SPV never claimed that it relied on a document examiner’s report; in fact, it indicated that it never consulted a document examiner and relied solely on the document’s metadata. Because the district court based its denial of sanctions on SPV’s failure to introduce a nonexistent report into evidence, it clearly conducted an erroneous assessment of the evidence. See, e.g., MDU Res. Grp. v. W.R. Grace & Co., 14 F.3d 1274, 1280 (8th Cir. 1994) (finding the district court clearly conducted an erroneous assessment of evidence when it misunderstood the purpose for which the evidence was offered). It therefore abused its discretion in denying Rule 26(g) sanctions against Attorney Kroll on this basis.
This is an unfortunate finding. The forgery was discovered because of the metadata that is present in every document.
If you have any questions about discovery obligations or your responsibilities as a lawyer, do not hesitate to contact me at ed@clintonlaw.net.
Ed Clinton, Jr.
fedcivilprocedure 